The House That Imagination Built

NEWBURY, MASS.

:Stretching two and a half miles between Newbury and Newburyport, High Street is famous for its stately parade of Federal houses, artifacts of an era when the seafaring communities north of Boston were commercial powers.

But only a mile away on Parker Street, a dramatic three-story dwelling crowns the hill at the end of a long, sloping lawn. As progressive as the rest of Newbury is traditional, the structure is, by virtue of its proportion and restrained ornamentation, classical in feeling.

"The gas station attendant asked me if I was building a chicken coop. The local reaction has been polite otherwise," Peter Eaton says with a laugh. Antiques dealers, Eaton and his wife, Joan Brownstein, designed the house themselves and constructed it in 2002 with the help of The Great Room Company, a Portsmouth, N.H., designer and builder.